openclaw/README_Tech.md

Moltbot Technical Documentation

Format Guidelines for Contributors

Style: Concise, technical, action-oriented. Brevity: One sentence per command/concept. Use bullet points, not paragraphs. Problem Log: Keep entries short—problem → symptom → solution. Add date and who fixed it if known. Commands: Always include the command first, explanation after (e.g., systemctl restart moltbot-gateway # Restarts the gateway service). Sections: Group by topic. Use ## for major sections, ### for subsections. Updates: When adding new problems/solutions, add to the end of the Problem Log section with date.

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Process Architecture

Core Components

1. Moltbot Gateway (moltbot-gateway)

   • Service: /etc/systemd/system/moltbot-gateway.service
   • Runs: /usr/bin/node dist/entry.js gateway --port 18789
   • Manager: systemd (isolated from PM2)
   • Handles: Telegram integration, message routing, model selection

2. Supporting Processes

   • Dashboard (si_project/dashboard) - PM2 managed, separate from bot
   • AI Product Visualizer (ai_product_visualizer) - PM2 managed, separate from bot
   • Telegram Relay - Embedded in gateway (grammY framework)
   • Task-Type Router - Compiled TypeScript module in gateway

3. Configuration Files

   • Global: /root/.clawdbot/moltbot.json
   • Agent-specific: /root/.clawdbot/agents/main/config.json
   • Environment: /root/.clawdbot/.env

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Process Management

Moltbot Gateway (Systemd)

# Check status
systemctl status moltbot-gateway

# Restart (reloads config + code)
systemctl restart moltbot-gateway

# Stop gracefully
systemctl stop moltbot-gateway

# Start if stopped
systemctl start moltbot-gateway

# View live logs
journalctl -u moltbot-gateway -f

# View last 100 lines
journalctl -u moltbot-gateway -n 100

Auto-restart: Enabled. If process crashes, systemd restarts it within 5 seconds. Boot persistence: Enabled. Starts automatically on system reboot.

From Telegram Chat

Send /restart command in Telegram to restart the bot gracefully without terminal access.

Dashboard (PM2)

# Check status
pm2 list

# Restart
pm2 restart dashboard

# Logs
pm2 logs dashboard

# Stop
pm2 stop dashboard

Isolation: Runs in separate PM2 daemon. Does not interfere with Moltbot.

Logs Location

# Moltbot systemd logs
journalctl -u moltbot-gateway -n 200

# Moltbot app logs (most detailed)
tail -f /var/log/moltbot-gateway.log

# Application debug logs
tail -f /tmp/moltbot/moltbot-*.log

---

Problem Log & Solutions

1. Duplicate Telegram Responses (Jan 28, 2026)

Problem: Bot sending same message 2-3 times.

Root Cause: streamMode: "partial" in Telegram config caused responses to stream as chunks, each sent separately.

Solution: Changed streamMode from "partial" to "block" in /root/.clawdbot/moltbot.json.

"telegram": {
  "streamMode": "block"  // Single unified message
}

Status: ✅ Fixed. Single responses now.

---

2. Unknown Model Error (Jan 28, 2026)

Problem: Error: Unknown model: openrouter/mistralai/mistral-devstral-2

Root Cause: Incorrect OpenRouter model ID format. Used old naming convention.

Solution: Updated model IDs to correct OpenRouter format:

• mistralai/devstral-2512 (Mistral Devstral 2)
• google/gemini-2.0-flash-001 (Gemini 2.0 Flash)
• meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct:free (Llama 3.3 70B)

Status: ✅ Fixed. Models now load correctly.

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3. PM2 Process Isolation Conflict (Jan 28, 2026)

Problem: Dashboard PM2 restarting 140+ times. Gateway conflicting with dashboard in same PM2 daemon.

Root Cause: Moltbot gateway was added to default PM2 instance, sharing resources with dashboard.

Solution: Moved Moltbot from PM2 to systemd service (isolated).

• Moltbot: systemd only
• Dashboard: PM2 only
• No shared daemon = no conflicts

Status: ✅ Fixed. Processes now isolated.

Files changed:

• Created: /etc/systemd/system/moltbot-gateway.service
• Removed: Moltbot from PM2 list

---

4. Missing Task-Type Router Compilation (Jan 28, 2026)

Problem: Bot said it implemented task-type routing but nothing changed.

Root Cause: TypeScript source files modified but not compiled to dist/.

Solution:

1. Fixed import error in src/agents/task-type-router.ts (DEFAULT_PROVIDER location)
2. Compiled: npm run build
3. Restarted gateway to load new dist/ code

Status: ✅ Fixed. Task-type router now active.

---

5. Telegram Command Limit Exceeded (Jan 29, 2026)

Problem: Error: setMyCommands failed: BOT_COMMANDS_TOO_MUCH (Telegram API limit = 100 commands).

Root Cause: Both config files had "native": "auto" trying to register all skills + commands with Telegram.

Solution: Disabled native command auto-registration:

// /root/.clawdbot/moltbot.json
"commands": {
  "native": false,
  "nativeSkills": false
}

// /root/.clawdbot/agents/main/config.json
"commands": {
  "native": false,
  "text": true,
  "restart": true
}

Status: ✅ Fixed. Telegram now connects without errors.

---

6. Node.js Version Too Old (Jan 28, 2026)

Problem: Moltbot requires Node.js 24+ but only v20 was installed.

Root Cause: Package.json specified engines: { node: ">=24" }.

Solution: Upgraded Node.js:

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_24.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Verified: node --version → v24.13.0

Status: ✅ Fixed.

---

7. Gateway Crash Loop & Inotify Exhaustion (Jan 29, 2026)

Problem: Gateway hung/became unresponsive. PM2 restarted 448+ times. Telegram bot stopped responding.

Symptoms:

• Port 18789 is already in use (process stuck, wouldn't release port)
• Gateway failed to start: gateway already running; lock timeout after 5000ms
• Lock files stale/not released
• Port conflict between different PM2 daemons and attempted systemd service

Root Cause: System hit inotify file descriptor limit (ENOSPC):

Error: ENOSPC: System limit for number of file watchers reached, watch '/root/.moltbot/moltbot.json'
Error: ENOSPC: System limit for number of file watchers reached, watch '/root/clawd/canvas'
Error: ENOSPC: System limit for number of file watchers reached, watch '/root/clawd'

Gateway couldn't monitor config/skill files for changes → config reloading broke → became hung/unresponsive → PM2 restart loop (448+ restarts).

Solutions:

1. Permanent inotify limit increase: /etc/sysctl.d/99-moltbot-inotify.conf

fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288  # Increased from 65536

Apply: sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.d/99-moltbot-inotify.conf

Verify: cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches (should show 524288)

2. Process management: Gateway is managed by PM2 (separate daemon), not systemd

pm2 status                    # Check gateway status
pm2 restart moltbot-gateway   # Restart gateway (PM2-managed)
pm2 logs moltbot-gateway      # View real-time logs

3. Manual recovery (if stuck):

killall -9 moltbot
pm2 restart moltbot-gateway

Key Files Modified:

• Created: /etc/sysctl.d/99-moltbot-inotify.conf (inotify limit increase)

Architecture Note:

• PM2 runs multiple independent daemons: si_project/dashboard, ai_product_visualizer, moltbot-gateway
• Each daemon is separate to prevent process interference
• Never use systemd for moltbot-gateway (causes port conflicts with PM2)

Status: ✅ Fixed. Inotify limit increased. PM2 managing gateway cleanly.

---

Gateway Stability Infrastructure (Jan 29, 2026)

Multi-Layer Stability Design

Layer 1: System Level

• Inotify watcher limit: 524288 (prevents file monitoring exhaustion)
  • Config: /etc/sysctl.d/99-moltbot-inotify.conf
  • Verify: cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

Layer 2: PM2 Process Management

• Automatic restart on crash
• Memory limit: 500MB (auto-restart if exceeded)
• Min uptime: 10 seconds (prevents restart storms)
• Kill timeout: 5 seconds (graceful shutdown before force kill)
• Config: /root/moltbot/ecosystem.config.cjs

Layer 3: Startup Hooks

• scripts/gateway-start.sh: Wrapper script that runs on every startup
  • Automatically cleans stale lock files (~/.clawdbot/*.lock)
  • Prevents "gateway already running" errors
  • Runs before node dist/entry.js gateway

Layer 4: Health Monitoring

• scripts/pm2-health-monitor.js: Standalone health check app managed by PM2
  • Runs every 5 minutes (configurable)
  • Tests port 18789 connectivity (detects hung processes)
  • Monitors inotify watcher usage (warns at 80% of limit)
  • Force-restarts via killall -9 moltbot if unresponsive
  • Logs to /tmp/moltbot/pm2-health-monitor.log
  • Isolated from gateway in same PM2 daemon

Monitoring Commands

# View both gateway and health monitor status
pm2 list

# View gateway logs (real-time)
pm2 logs moltbot-gateway

# View health monitor logs
pm2 logs moltbot-health-monitor

# View last 50 lines of either
pm2 logs moltbot-gateway -n 50
pm2 logs moltbot-health-monitor -n 50

# Monitor health checks in real-time
tail -f /tmp/moltbot/pm2-health-monitor.log

# Force restart gateway
pm2 restart moltbot-gateway

# Emergency restart (if stuck)
killall -9 moltbot && pm2 restart moltbot-gateway

Recovery Scenarios

Scenario 1: Gateway Becomes Unresponsive (Process Running but Port Hung)

• Symptom: pm2 status shows online, but nc -zv 127.0.0.1 18789 fails
• Response: Health monitor detects this within 5 minutes
• Action: Auto-kills process, PM2 restarts it
• Result: Bot responds to next Telegram message

Scenario 2: Lock File Left Behind

• Symptom: Gateway failed to start: gateway already running
• Cause: Previous process crashed without cleaning locks
• Response: gateway-start.sh cleans locks on startup
• Result: Gateway starts cleanly

Scenario 3: Inotify Exhaustion

• Symptom: Error: ENOSPC: System limit for number of file watchers reached
• Cause: Too many config/skill files being watched
• Response: Health monitor logs warning at 80% threshold
• Solution: Delete unused skills or increase limit further (requires code review)

Scenario 4: Memory Exhaustion

• Symptom: Process becomes slow/unresponsive, memory climbing
• Response: PM2 auto-restart when hitting 500MB limit
• Result: Clean restart, memory reset

What This Prevents

✅ Telegram messages causing gateway hang ✅ Stale lock files blocking restarts ✅ Inotify limit exhaustion going unnoticed ✅ Memory leaks causing slowness ✅ Restart storms from Restart=always ✅ Systemd conflicts with PM2 ✅ Lack of visibility into gateway health

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Telegram Plugin Commands Overflow (Jan 29, 2026)

Problem: Bot crashed during Telegram initialization with BOT_COMMANDS_TOO_MUCH error.

Symptoms:

• Gateway failed at startup: setMyCommands failed: Call to 'setMyCommands' failed! (400: Bad Request: BOT_COMMANDS_TOO_MUCH)
• Telegram provider initialization failed
• Bot unresponsive to messages

Root Cause: Many extensions are installed (Discord, Matrix, Mattermost, Teams, etc.). These extensions were registering their plugin commands for Telegram. Telegram's API has a hard limit of 100 commands per bot. With all extensions registering commands, the limit was exceeded.

Solution: Disabled plugin command registration for Telegram.

Config Change:

"plugins": {
  "entries": {
    "telegram": {
      "enabled": false
    }
  }
}

Location: /root/.clawdbot/moltbot.json

Effect: Extensions can still be used on other channels (Discord, Slack, etc.) but won't try to register commands on Telegram. This is correct because most extension commands aren't applicable to Telegram anyway.

Status: ✅ Fixed. Bot now initializes cleanly, processes Telegram messages without crashing.

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Configuration Summary

Model Fallback Chain

Primary: Mistral Devstral 2 2512 (agentic specialist) Fallbacks:

1. Gemini 2.0 Flash (long-context, 1M tokens)
2. Llama 3.3 70B (creative/pedagogical)
3. Moonshot Kimi K2.5 (language model)
4. Claude Sonnet 4.5 (escalation)
5. Claude Opus 4.5 (complex reasoning)

Task-Type Routing

• File Analysis → Gemini Flash
• Creative Content → Llama 3.3 70B
• Debugging → Claude Sonnet 4.5
• CLI/Commands → Mistral Devstral 2
• General → Mistral Devstral 2 (default)

Telegram Settings

• Streaming Mode: block (single message per response)
• Commands Native: false (avoid API limit)
• Restart Command: true (allows /restart from chat)
• User ID Allowlist: 876311493 (only you)

---

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Architecture: Process Management

PM2 Daemons on This Host

• Moltbot Gateway (pm2 start ecosystem.config.cjs or pm2 restart moltbot-gateway)

  • Managed by: PM2 (separate daemon, independent from other PM2 instances)
  • Port: 18789
  • PID file: /root/.pm2/pids/moltbot-gateway-0.pid
  • Config: /root/moltbot/ecosystem.config.cjs

• Other PM2 Daemons (separate instances)

  • si_project/dashboard - Frontend dashboard
  • ai_product_visualizer - Backend visualizer
  • Each runs in its own PM2 daemon to prevent interference

Systemd Services (Independent)

• code-server.service - Code editor (not PM2-managed)
• ssh.service - SSH server (not PM2-managed)
• These do not interact with moltbot or other PM2 processes

Safety Design

• Process isolation: Each PM2 daemon is independent (separate instances)
• No port conflicts: Moltbot never uses systemd (only PM2)
• Independent logging: Moltbot logs to /tmp/moltbot/ (separate from other services)
• Inotify limit: System-wide increased to prevent file watcher exhaustion

Monitoring & Control

pm2 list                      # View all PM2 daemons (in current user's daemon)
pm2 status                    # Show moltbot-gateway status
pm2 restart moltbot-gateway   # Restart gateway
pm2 logs moltbot-gateway      # Real-time logs
pm2 logs moltbot-gateway -n 100  # Last 100 lines

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Quick Troubleshooting

Bot Not Responding

1. Check status: pm2 status
2. Check logs: pm2 logs moltbot-gateway or pm2 logs moltbot-gateway -n 50
3. Restart: pm2 restart moltbot-gateway
4. Check port: nc -zv 127.0.0.1 18789
5. Check inotify limit (if file watching errors): cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches (should be 524288)
6. If stuck, force kill and restart:

killall -9 moltbot
pm2 restart moltbot-gateway

Telegram Connection Error

Check logs for setMyCommands failed or network errors:

pm2 logs moltbot-gateway | grep -i telegram

If command limit error: Verify native: false in /root/.clawdbot/moltbot.json and /root/.clawdbot/agents/main/config.json.

High Latency (>1 minute)

Expected for first API call to OpenRouter. Check OpenRouter API status. If consistent, check model health: node dist/entry.js models status

Duplicate Responses

Check streamMode: "block" is set in /root/.clawdbot/moltbot.json.

Gateway Crashes Frequently

Check PM2 restart count: pm2 list | grep moltbot-gateway

• If ↺ count is high (>10), check logs for root cause:
  • Inotify exhaustion: dmesg | grep -i inotify
  • Memory pressure: pm2 logs moltbot-gateway | grep -i memory
  • Telegram errors: pm2 logs moltbot-gateway | grep -i telegram If issue persists, reduce retry attempts in retry policy config.

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Deployment Checklist

• Node.js 24+ installed
• Moltbot cloned and built (npm run build)
• Systemd service created and enabled
• Config files populated (moltbot.json, agents/main/config.json)
• API keys in environment or .env
• Telegram bot token configured
• Gateway started: systemctl start moltbot-gateway
• Telegram connection verified: node dist/entry.js channels status
• Test message sent in Telegram

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Key File Locations

/root/moltbot/                          Main installation
├── dist/                               Compiled code (loaded at runtime)
├── src/                                TypeScript source
├── ecosystem.config.cjs                PM2 config (moltbot-gateway process)
└── README_Tech.md                      This file

~/.clawdbot/                            Config directory
├── moltbot.json                        Global gateway config
├── agents/main/
│   ├── config.json                     Agent-specific config
│   └── auth-profiles.json              API key storage
└── .env                                Environment variables

/root/.pm2/                             PM2 daemon directory
├── pids/moltbot-gateway-0.pid          Process ID file (moltbot-gateway)
└── logs/                               PM2 logs directory

/etc/sysctl.d/                          System configuration
└── 99-moltbot-inotify.conf            Inotify limit increase (filesystem watchers)

/tmp/moltbot/                           Runtime logs
├── moltbot-*.log                       Detailed application debug logs
├── pm2-out.log                         PM2 stdout log
└── pm2-error.log                       PM2 stderr/error log

/etc/systemd/system/                    Systemd services (NOT used for moltbot)
├── code-server.service                 Code editor (independent)
├── ssh.service                         SSH server (independent)
└── ...other services

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Last Updated: Jan 29, 2026 (19:50 UTC) Maintained By: Claude Code + Moltbot Task Router Latest: Crash loop root cause fixed (inotify limit increased to 524288). PM2 process manager confirmed as correct, systemd conflicts removed. Gateway now running cleanly via PM2.